The woman who thought she’d bagged an eye-watering $43 million (£33 million) jackpot before being offered a steak dinner instead has spoken out about the crazy incident.

Back in 2016, Katrina Bookman thought her life had changed forever when she was playing the slots at the Resorts World Casino in Queens, New York, and her machine said she’d won.

She hadn’t won a tenner or anything like that though, it looked like the American had pulled off the biggest coup in slot machine history, a grand total of $42,949,672.

Overjoyed, Bookman took a quick selfie next to the massive cash figure that would soon be in her possession – or so she thought.

After heading back to the casino the next day for an ‘official’ ruling on how much she’d be given, they reportedly told her: “You didn’t win nothing.”

Her whole world began to unravel, as they told her that her actual winnings totalled $2.25 (£1.77), though they also offered her a steak dinner as an apology for the machine ‘malfunction’.

This means the the actual prize that she won on the slot machine with her 40 cent wager should have sat at $6,500 (£5,000), but the machine unfortunately had a disclaimer saying: ‘Malfunctions void all pays and plays’.

An enraged Bookman turned down the consolation prizes and instead chose to fight for her winnings by taking them to court.

The New York State Commission and Resorts World later confirmed that the machine had indeed malfunctioned, but the court case went on.

Bookman made an appearance on CNN: Inside Edition in 2016 as they covered her unique story, with the reporter asking if she felt robbed, to which she said: “Yes of course, I felt very robbed.”

She thought that she had won it all. (ABC7)

When asked about what she thought about being offered a free steak dinner, the New York woman answered: “Really? Like are you serious? I mean, I felt insulted.”

After this incident, Resorts World spokesperson Dan Bank told CNN at the time: “Upon being notified of the situation, casino personnel were able to determine that the figure displayed on the penny slot was the result of an obvious malfunction – a fact later confirmed by the New York State Gaming Commission.

“After explaining the circumstances to Ms. Bookman, we offered to pay her the correct amount that was shown on the printed ticket. Machine malfunctions are rare, and we would like to extend our apologies to Ms. Bookman for any inconvenience this may have caused.”

Following the incident, Bookman hired attorney Adam Ripka, and the pair filed a 17-page lawsuit against Resorts World Casino, Genting New York LLC, and software provider IGT.

The suit alleged that Resorts World Casino was ‘negligent’ and didn’t properly maintain their lottery equipment as Bookman suffered from ‘mental anguish’ from the incident.

Bookman ultimately walked away with nothing. (Inside Edition)

First fighting for the original $42.9 million, Ripka pivoted and fought for the $6,500 winnings, which was the maximum allowed on the machine, ABC7 reported.

Ripka called the casino’s excuses ‘ridiculous’ and explained to CNN at the time: “You can’t claim a machine is broken because you want it to be broken. Does that mean it wasn’t inspected? Does it mean it wasn’t maintained?”

“And if so, does that mean that people that played there before [Bookman] had zero chance of winning?”

So how did it turn out? Unfortunately, it’s not a happy ending.

At the end of Bookman’s jackpot winnings saga, a judge at Queens County Supreme Court ruled in favour of the defendants, meaning that she walked away with nothing at all – not even the steak dinner or the $2.25 that was printed on her ticket.

An au pair has won over £2 million in damages after she terrifyingly realised her boss has installed a hidden camera in a smoke detector in her bedroom.

Kelly Andrade was awarded a £2.1 million payout when it was revealed her employer, Michael Esposito had secretly been filming her, according to a Brooklyn Federal Court lawsuit.

Andrade was excited to work as an au pair (Derek Smith Law group)

The then 25-year-old worked as a live-in-nanny for the fried chicken mogul where the family were staying in New York’s Staten Island.

When the Colombian-born woman was placed with Esposito, who owns three LaRosa Grill franchises, and his wife Danielle to look after their four children, she was thrilled.

She told the Post she was looking forward to the chance to be able to learn English and work in the US, with the family giving her a private bedroom.

But Andrade became suspicious when she noticed the 35-year-old dad often adjusting the smoke detector in her room, with it ‘constantly being repositioned’ according to the suit.

Three weeks into working there in 2021, she inspected it and discovered the hidden camera.

She alleged Esposito arrived home ‘within minutes’ and tried to barge the door down when he realised she had uncovered his seedy trick.

Having initially pretended to be asleep, she jumped from a window in fear and ran down the street.

Andrade was filmed by a hidden camera (Derek Smith Law group)

Andrade’s lawyer says she spent the night sleeping ‘on the street in a bush’ after fleeing Esposito’s house, before she made her way to a nearby police station, handing over the memory card she’d found.

The au pair went on to sue Esposito, with the suit claiming it contained ‘hundreds of recordings’ showing her partially dressed or nude.

The dad was arrested on 24 March 2021 and he received a felony charge of unlawful surveillance.

But he avoided prison time on the condition he completed two years of probation and counselling, which Andrade said was ‘not enough’.

Esposito has now been ordered to pay up a mega $2.78 million (£2.1 million) after his secret X-rated recording plan was uncovered.

A Manhattan Jury has awarded $780,000 (£588,000) in emotional distress damages against both of the Esposito couple plus the $2 million (£1.5 million) in punitive damages against the man.

“Right now I’m working on myself recovering,” Andrade said. “It wasn’t easy for me to be on a trial. It was a very difficult time for me. It brings back memories that I’m trying to forget.”

Many of us have had the fantasy of going back in time and telling our former selves to buy a few Bitcoin when they were dirt cheap and selling them now they’re really expensive.

You’d be very rich indeed if you’d done that, but imagine if you’d actually got loads of Bitcoin and they’d accidentally been thrown away.

A bloke who amassed a fortune in Bitcoin is currently suing his local council in a bid to get it back after he accidentally threw out the hard drive which he stored them on over 10 years ago.

James Howells, 39, is set to head for court later this year as he believes he has ‘pinpointed’ the exact spot where his lost bin bag containing a fortune in cryptocurrency is and he wants to get it back.

He accidentally put the hard drive with a bunch of Bitcoin in a black bin bag while having an office clear-out and his partner mistook it for a rubbish bag, so she took it down to the tip where it has been ever since.

Quickly realising his mistake, James has repeatedly asked Newport City Council if he can dig his hard drive out of the landfill site it was dumped in but they have repeatedly said no.

Now he’s lodged a writ of £495,314,800 to retrieve the hard drive from the landfill site, and is being backed by a team of wealthy investors

James says there were around 8,000 Bitcoin on the hard drive and since they were accidentally chucked out the value of the cryptocurrency has skyrocketed.

James had a hard drive with 8,000 Bitcoin on it, but it was accidentally thrown out in 2013. (Wales News Service)

At time of writing one Bitcoin is worth about £50,000, so if the contents of the hard drive remain intact they’d have an eye watering value of around £400 million.

His legal team is suing the council and the matter is set to end up in court in December.

The 39-year-old even hired the council’s former head of landfill to help him track down exactly where the hard drive is, and is now sure it’s within the ‘Cell 2 – Area 2’ section of Newport’s Docksway Landfill.

He said: “It is what it is. I could spend the rest of my life working nine-to-five and thinking about it every day. I might as well spend my time trying to recover this simple piece of metal.

“Until the courts tells me ‘N-O spells no’, I’m going to keep going. Obviously my finances are not in the best position at the moment.

“I’m focusing all my current efforts and resources, including money, on the recovery project. I struggle along in the meantime.

“But the legal effort is covered. We’re willing to go all the way to the appeals court, the Supreme Court. With a case of this magnitude I’m expecting to go the full distance. I didn’t really want to go to court but this is the final shot.”

James is sure he knows exactly where in the landfill site his hard drive is, and he’s suing the council so they’ll let him dig it up. (Wales News Service)

A spokesperson for Newport City Council explained that they couldn’t let James dig up their excavation site due to the environmental impact it would have, and that they are ‘vigorously resisting’ his ‘fundamentally weak claim’.

They said: “The council has told Mr Howells multiple times that excavation is not possible under our environmental permit and that work of that nature would have a huge negative environmental impact on the surrounding area.

“The council is the only body authorised to carry out operations on the site.

“The council follows a strict monitoring and reporting regime for all environmental parameters, which we report on frequently to the regulator.

“In common with other waste disposal authorities, exceedances of some of the levels do occur from time to time and these are logged in Natural Resources Wales’ compliance reports.

“Our monitoring and reporting regime is not related to Mr Howells’ claim and we believe the mention of it is nothing more than an attempt to draw attention away from a fundamentally weak claim which we are vigorously resisting.

“Yet again responding to Mr Howells’ baseless claims are costing the council and Newport taxpayers time and money which could be better spent on delivering services.”

Carl Sabatino’s aunt left behind a $25 million (£20 million) gift for him just before she passed away.

Jenny Verastro, once of Staten Island, US, told her doting nephew on her deathbed in 2004 that she had left a hidden treasure under her sewing machine.

She had kept it a secret for years and Carl would abide by her dying wish.

We all wish we had an aunt like Jenny. (NBC)

After taking a look underneath, he discovered an old painting wrapped in newspaper, which he, initially, thought nothing of.

However, he soon realised that the drawing was something he remembered seeing in his aunt’s house many times as a child before she passed.

Curious Carl started to take a closer look at the painting and you wouldn’t believe what he found.

“As I moved the sewing machine, it came sliding right out into my lap. I was stunned,” he said.

“I found it wrapped in newspaper. That started this adventure 12 years ago.”

Carl was stunned after spotting a signature in the upper left hand corner, which read ‘Picasso’.

But could it be?

It was deemed to be a replica. (NBC)

Suspecting it might be a replica of Picasso’s 1901 painting ‘Woman with a Cape’, he went and got it valued at Christie’s in New York.

“She examined it for about 30 seconds and literally flipped it back at me and said, ‘This is a $10 (£7.86) poster, don’t waste your time,’” he recalled.

Sabatino then went to visit art analyst Dr. Kenneth Smith, president of the Center for Art Materials Analysis to see if he could find out more info.

Smith used a needle to extract pigment and studied it under a microscope, concluding it was consistent with materials used in Europe in the 1930s.

Finally, after 15 years of research, the re-painted drawing was officially verified and had been appraised for a whopping $25 million (£20 million) in 2019.

It was legit. (NBC)

“The owner went through the time and expense to have it chemically tested, dated and having the fingerprint analyzed to ensure the validity of the work,” Alexandra DeMasi, the gallery director of Sheldon Fine Art said.

“I genuinely think the most interesting thing about the piece is that, to some extent, it rewrites art history.”

Demasi claims that ownership can be traced back to 1944, when a man named Nicholas Verrastro bought the piece from a street corner vendor during WWII.

The painting arrived in New York City and the piece was kept in the home of Jennie and Rose Verrastro in Greenwich Village.

Incredible stuff – now go and check underneath your sewing machine folks